Broken Frontier

Comic Cuts was the name of the long-running British comic that debuted way back around 1890 and, as such, seemed a fitting banner title for Broken Frontier’s celebratory series of articles during our Brits On Top! event. Join us each day this week as noted British creators share some nostalgic comics-related snippets of their childhood; providing anecdotes that are sometimes funny, sometimes poignant and sometimes wonderfully bizarre… Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.

Andy Fanton: Oink!

Growing up in the 1980s, we kids had an embarrassment of riches when it came to humour comics, which is just as well for these were (and still are) the titles I naturally gravitated toward.

From hardy perennials like The Dandy and The Beano, to the likes of Buster, Whoopee!, Nutty, and Whizzer and Chips (I was a Whiz Kid, in case you’re wondering), the shelves were packed with such titles, without a polybag or licensing agreement between them. I loved these comics, each and every one.

But it was a freebie given away with one of these comics which blew my brain into a whole new shape.

The comic was Buster, dated the 3rd of March, 1986. The freebie in question was a preview issue of a ‘great new comic’, and that great new comic was Oink!.

Even though I was only seven at the time, I can still recall the shock of leafing through that preview. It was quite unlike any of the other titles I was reading (although I later saw it labelled as a ‘junior Viz’, those words would have meant nothing to my young self).

Each page fizzled and crackled with mad energy; from the front cover depicting the comic’s editor, Uncle Pigg, torturing a kid on a rack until he agrees to read the comic; to the borders of the pages crammed with extra jokes and frequent appearances of Pigg’s poopy assistants, the plops.

And the comic strips themselves were equally as chaotic, full of toilet humour, grotesques, comedy violence and mayhem; with the likes of Lew Stringer’s brainless bully Tom Thug, Banx’s disgusting alien Burp, and Tony Husband’s Horace ‘Ugly Face’ Watkins all burping and bashing their way through the pages. It was anarchy, delightfully lunatic anarchy, and I was hooked, picking up every issue from then on.

The real standout feature of the comics, however, was the way they were drawn. In stark contrast to the finely draughted, precise drawings of the other weeklies, Oink! featured a hugely varied selection of styles, some of them extremely loose and simple in execution, the speech bubbles hand-drawn and lettered by the artist’s own spidery handwriting.

This flicked a switch in my young brain - comic art wasn’t just the preserve of a select few artistic demigods with drawing powers beyond most mere mortals, anyone with an idea of a joke to share could have a go. And so began my own shaky attempts at comic art, which now sees me working for one of the country’s oldest comics, The Dandy, which itself has taken a great big leaf out of the Oink! style book, some twenty-three years after that title folded.

The wide variety of drawing styles is there, the hand-written speech bubbles are there, the sense of anarchy and irreverence is there, even legendary Lew Stringer is there. And, as it did all those years ago, the formula still blows my brain, and feels as fresh as ever.

Piggin’ fantastic.

Andy Fanton is a regular contributor to The Dandy including the wonderful George vs. Dragon. You can find out more about Andy's work on his website here and also follow him on Twitter.

Ian Churchill: Marvelman, Look-In and The Leopard from Lime Street

My first introduction to British comics was an old beaten-up Marvelman Annual from a jumble sale bought by my Gran, which dazzled me with the bright colours and set me firmly on a course to all things superhero!

Superheroes enthralled me, and from then on it was Marvel comics reprints that drew my attention, depleted my piggy bank and later on relieved me of pocket money on a weekly basis.

It was very rare for me to stray from the super-powered path, but when I eventually did it was Bullet and Look-In that beckoned. With Bullet there was Fireball, a moustached adventurer with a cool 1970s medallion swinging from his neck. Included free with the first issue came that self same medallion - albeit it in plastic with gold paint - and flexing a healthy imagination I in turn became Fireball!

Along with the medallion came a red plastic wallet with an ID card and other stuff and it was enough to free me from the grip of superheroes for a short while.

Look-In was next to whisper in my ear as it catered to my T.V. obsessed life, allowing me to follow the adventures of the Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, The Tomorrow People and many others in comic strip form. Added to that the pop culture of the day and T.V. listings to boot, it soon became a weekly addition to my pull list.

I eventually flirted with a comic called Buster as it had a superhero lurking within its pages called The Leopard from Lime Street, similar to Spider-Man, he was a teen hero who got his powers after being scratched by a radioactive Leopard at the zoo if my memory serves! From there I moved on to Tiger which had a character called DeathWish. He was a stuntman who was badly disfigured performing a stunt and so took to wearing a full-face leather mask and began taking on adventures that had a high risk quota, in the belief that he had little to live for.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the British comics, but ultimately it was the Marvel superhero reprints that won me over and gave me my passion for comics that persists to this day.

I thank my Gran, and Marvelman!

To find out more about Ian Churchill's Marineman visit the official site here. The Marineman trade paperback is released later this month and can be pre-ordered on Amazon US and on Amazon UK.

Andy Lanning: ZOOOM!

Saturday, February 26th 1977, the day before my 13th birthday, saw me rush to my local newsagents first thing in the morning, eager to pick up a copy of a brand new comic called ‘ZOOOM!’ that I’d seen advertised on the TV the week before.

I was desperate for a new comic fix as my previous Favourite Comic Ever, Action, had only recently been pulled from the shelves for being too violent only to reappear in a watered-down, toothless reincarnation of its previous ultra-violent, blood-soaked glory. This new ZOOOM comic looked just the ticket and it had three ‘O’s in its title. Cool.

So it was that I went straight up to the counter, where they were just sorting through a bundle of new magazines, papers and comics and produced my shiny ten pence then asked for a copy of the new comic, ‘ZOOOM’, please.  

The sweet old dear behind the counter was bemused,’ Zoom?’

‘No ZOOOM,’ I corrected her. ‘Capitals. Three ‘O’s.’

She looked through the bundle, no, nothing of that name here.
 
I asked that she recheck, and check again when she came up empty, but there was nothing in the bundle and people behind me in the queue were getting impatient. She called to the shop owner out the back and he emerged, checked the pile and agreed with her. Are you sure it’s called ‘Zoom?’ ‘ZOOOM.’ I mumbled.

‘Sorry son, maybe it’s out next week?’ he offered.

‘But there was an ad on TV and everything,’ I protested and slunk out the shop.

I went home dejected and feverously watched the TV for a glimpse of the ad again. I’d only caught the ad once, and my recollection of it was hazy; all I knew was that it was advertising a new weekly sci-fi comic, that it had some green alien guy in it and it had a really cool free gift, some sort of space spinner! Wow!

Seriously, Wow!

My fervent TV watching paid divvies the next week, when I learnt, to my embarrassment, that the comic wasn’t called ZOOOM. It was called 2000AD!

God knows where I got Zooom from? I can only put it down to the fact that I didn’t see the name clearly on the TV. We’d only had a colour TV a few months and my dad insisted we keep the colour cranked up to headache inducing levels that I can only put down to the fact he wanted to get his money’s worth out of the thing which made everything look like it had been shot in out of focus heat vision.

Anyhoo, I trotted back into the shop and was lucky that they’d put the new comics out, including the first issue of 2000AD which I promptly bought and continued to buy every week for the next 20 years or so. They sit in my parents' attic to this day, though I think the space spinner was eaten by next door’s dog.

Still think ZOOOM comic sounds cool, three ‘O’s and all…

Andy Lanning is currently co-writing New Mutants and Heroes for Hire for Marvel and the upcoming Resurrection Man for DC. You can order a whole host of Andy Lanning and Dan Abnett's work on Marvel, 2000AD and DC characters in trade paperbacks here...